A midst the bustle of nurse Sally Yarwood accepts a call on the handsfree device dangling around her neck. As team leader in charge of ED’s north pod for this shift, she is being asked for bed space for an elderly patient. Using the tablet computer slung across her shoulder, she pulls up a map view of the ED showing every bed in the department, whether it is occupied and whether the patient has been seen. Christchurch Hospital’s new Emergency Department (ED), charge She assigns the new patient a space by pulling his information from the patient management system ‘ED at a Glance’ (EDaaG), lets the caller know, then assigns a nurse to the patient - all with a swipe or push of a button.
Waipapa
how long until a patient is likely to be admitted or discharged. Previously, this information was kept on hospital whiteboards, smattered with magnets and symbols. ED charge nurse manager Anne Esson describes these as being like honey pots, with staff swarming around like bees, trying to see or update information. With 375 people coming through the ED on one recent weekend day, having information at the fingertips and available across the organisation is critical to patient flow and experience. Yarwood explains: “I’m very mobile and can go around looking at different areas, dealing with lots of different problems and know exactly what is happening at a glance.” A quick change of tabs on her tablet computer and the charge nurse can view bed occupancy across
The South Island’s largest hospital building at 62,000 m 2
Opened in November 2020
Part of Christchurch Hospital which has 833 beds
Houses Christchurch hospital’s new emergency department, which is the busiest in Australasia, treating more than 83,000 patients a year
A fresh look Just 500 metres from the old ED, the airy corridors and digital screens adorning the bright white walls signal, we are in Canterbury DHB’s new acute services building, Waipapa. Calls over a general tannoy system are a thing of the past, as staff contact each other individually using voice recognition technology Vocera. “IT’S REALLY TRANSFORMATIONAL BECAUSE A LOT OF HOSPITALS HAVE DATA, BUT NOT A LOT HAVE TRANSLATED THAT INTO OPERATIONAL INFORMATION.” PREMIUM TO CONT I NUE READ I NG TH I S PAGE JO I N HiNZ TODAY FROM $1 7 PER MONTH WI TH NO M I N I MUM TERM . OR $1 9 8 PER YEAR . hinz.org.nz/page/JOIN the whole hospital, allowing her to be more proactive about moving people through. A bird’s eye view This whole-of-hospital system, FloView, was built by Canterbury
DHB’s IT team and helps Nicky Topp, nursing director daily operations, “use data to make decisions”. In front of a bank of computer screens displaying activity across the hospital in real-time, Topp explains that the system holds key information such as every patient’s individual needs, diet and expected discharge date. FloView feeds into the hospital’s kitchens and its most recent update includes information on ‘clinical criteria for discharge’, which allows for nurse-led discharges once a patient meets set criteria.
“Previously I had to walk around to find people or call their phones, now I can allocate and do it on the move and on one device,” Yarwood explains. The Waipapa ED has doubled in physical size and been divided into pods of 20 beds each, making it all the more important that staff are not tied to a central location. As patients present at the department, she can see at the touch of a button who is in the waiting room, where the next bed is coming up and
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